Playwright David Bar Katz, who launched a lawsuit against the magazine, used the money from the settlement to aid a writer foundation.

Photo credit: Dominic Chan/WENN

The man that National Enquirer called Philip Seymour Hoffman's gay lover has won a settlement from the magazine over the false report. Playwright David Bar Katz launched a $50 million lawsuit against Enquirer for printing and publishing a story of him romancing the actor shortly before his death in early February.

Katz got Enquirer to grant $45,000 each year to newly-formed American Playwriting Foundation in Hoffman's honor. The money will aid unproduced plays and the prize will be called the Relentless Award. "It's enough for the foundation to give out these grants for years to come," Katz told NY Times.

Enquirer has since retracted its report and called it "an honest mistake." The reporter who wrote the story interviewed someone who claimed to be Bar Katz after doing an identity search. "The reporter did the interview and was convinced it was the right person," Katz's lawyer Judd Burnstein said. Per the settlement, the magazine has bought a full-page ad on NY Times' main news section on Wednesday, February 26 to explain the "mistake."

Katz was one of the two people who discovered Hoffman's body lying on the actor's bathroom floor. "The issue was never me being outraged at being accused of being gay -- we’re theater guys, who cares?" Bar Katz told the Times. "The issue was lying about the drugs, that I would betray my friend by telling confidences."